Peter Fischli David Weiss: How to Work Better - Hardcover

Nancy Spector; Nat Trotman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3791355023 ISBN 13: 9783791355023

Publisher: Prestel, 2016

Synopsis

Throughout the course of their collaboration, Peter Fischli and David Weiss celebrated the sheer triviality of everyday existence, observing the world with bemused detachment. As this book shows, their often humorous work offers a sustained reflection on the intertwined strands of leisure, productivity and playful absurdity that shape our lives. With its deliberately mundane subject matter and quotidian source material, their work explores the poetics of banality in a wide range of mediums, including photography, videos, slide projections, films, books, sculptures and multimedia installations. This retrospective volume features an in-depth, illustrated survey of the artists' long history of collaboration, from the early Sausage Series (1979)-staged vignettes created in miniature using deli meats and various household items-to their last work, the large-scale public installation Rock on Top of Another Rock (2010-13), augmented by archival images, notes on process and interview excerpts culled from the artists' Zurich-based archives. A series of probing essays on their practice and thematic concerns rounds out this definitive account of Fischli and Weiss's vital contribution to contemporary art.

About this title

Review:

"[T]he book [is] an apt primer to the artists' 30-plus year partnership. It is spot on in its generic feel--with only a laconic, ten-step instructional missive titled "How to Work Better" (cribbed from a Thai ceramics factory) on its dull white cover. The text is a fitting pastiche of visuals and words from scholars, critics, friends, gallerists, and the artists themselves."

--CHOICE

About the Author:

Nancy Spector is Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Nat Trotman is Curator, Performance and Media, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: Prestel
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 3791355023
• ISBN 13: 9783791355023
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400